How it changed and does it work?
Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University
October 21, 2025
About me
Puzzled by why so many people consume openly propaganda media
Studying whether (informational) propaganda is persuasive in Russia and some other countries (?)
Many definitions… and too many arguments about them
Hard vs Soft Propaganda
Framing/Priming vs. Censorship
Summary:
Examples of old dictators calls for open violence: Muammar Gadaffi of Lybia, Francisco Franco of Spain, Mao Zedong of China, Benito Mussolini of Italy…
But not so much violence today
How do autocrats conceal violence?
Elite conflict leads to shift to spin dictators:
Evidence: More educated are more aware of press freedom and more critical of government
Do you find the theory persuasive?
Is ideology really gone?
How sustainable is informational autocracy? Is it a transitory state?
Theories: Propaganda persuades masses Mattingly and Yao (2022) / Sends signal to the elites Huang (2015) / Jamms independent media signals Roberts (2018)
Expectation: Propaganda changes the audiences’ beliefs and attitudes in the expected direction (i.e. favoring the regime)
Heavily empirical literature: Mix of field and quasi (?) experiments
1930s: Radio Propagation in Weimar Germany and its Effects on Voting for Nazi Party Adena et al. (2015)
1936-42: Father Coughlin’s Effects on FDR Votes and Sales of US War Bonds Wang (2021)
1943-45: Italians’ Exposure to BBC Radio and Resistance to Nazi Occupation during WWII Gagliarducci et al. (2020)
1994: Exposure to Hutu Nationalist Radio and Participation in Rwandan Genocide Yanagizawa-Drott (2014)
1999: Exposure to Independent TV and Voting in Russia in 1999 Enikolopov, Petrova, and Zhuravskaya (2011)
2012: Random Radio Distribution and Exposure to Radio during the Mali Coup Bleck and Michelitch (2017)
2014: Exposure to Russian TV and Ukrainian Elections in 2014 Peisakhin and Rozenas (2018)
2018: Expansion of Transmission of Independent Radio Station in Tanzania Green et al. (2023)
Precincts within radius of Nazi controlled radio broadcasts were more likely to vote for Hitler, join the Nazi Party and engage in anti-Jewish deportations prior to 1942
Leveraging regional variation in topography identifies negative effects on FDR votes even after going away from public
Uses sunspot activity to approximate variation in BBC radio reception. Important role in motivating resistance but no long-lasting anti-Nazi effects
Topographic variation in exposure to RTLM responsible for roughly 10% of killings, especially from violence requiring coordination
Regions with independent NTV Channel had 8.9 pp less votes for government party, but the effects diminish after takeover by the government
Radio exposure boosted national identity but did not elevate explicit support for the junta
Boost in support for pro-Russian parties but no effect on turnout
Effects on political interest and knowledge about domestic politics. Attitude change on a range of gender issues was sporadic
So is propaganda effective?
Current research avenues:
Survey experiments (too many to cover here) with curated content finds there are effects
Studies of social media censorship and the effects of social media / LLMs
Studies of how to combat propaganda and misinformation ()